The Choctaw were the first to be forced to move loosing about a third of their number to death by illness, starvation and shot by soldiers. They were first settled in Mississippi until driven out by white settlers moving north they formed the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation.

The Seminole composed of many tribes who had moved to Spanish Florida to escape the English and the Americans were joined by escaped black slaves, known as Black Seminoles They became next tribe to be moved by the government, approximately 5000 strong they fought in the everglades for many years before capture and shipment to Arkansas. An unknown number, less than a thousand escaped to stay deep in the Everglades and fight the Government. They now are known as The Only Indian Nation to never submit to or sign a treaty with the United States.

The next Nation to feel the greed of President Andrew Jackson were the Creek. They had successfully petitioned President John Quincey Adams to nullify the Treaty of Indian Springs and thought they were safe. However the Governor of Georgia began enforcing the Treaty of Indian Springs and moving the Creek to western "Indian" lands. President Adams attempted to intervene however backed down rather than risk a Civil War over the issue. Many who lived in Alabama were given allotments for their lands and could sell these allotments and move to Indian Lands west of the Mississippi or submit to the laws of the white man. Many Creek were cheated out of and/or killed for their allotments by greedy whites. There were approximately 20,000 Creeks living in Alabama, many died in skirmishes with the US Army and more died on the trail to lands west of the Mississippi.

Next and the best treated on the list were the Chickasaw. They received financial compensation for their lands and moved voluntarily west of the Mississippi where they merged with the Choctaw Nation in what was to become the State of Oklahoma.

Finally and possibly the worst treated the Cherokee were rounded up and put in concentration camps near Red Clay, TN (About 15 miles from where I write this.) During the forced round up men women and children were killed by the US troops just so they could loot their possessions and home. The US mustered 7000 troops to move the Cherokee from their homes to Red Clay and from there to lands west of the Mississippi, a thousand mile forced march with the Cherokee barefoot, unarmed, starving and sick, harassed and killed by whites with no protection from the 7000 US Troops. They were moved through Tennessee, Kentucky ferried across the Ohio River and charged a dollar a person to be ferried, marched through a cold freezing Illinois winter, through Missouri before the reached Oklahoma where they were resettled.

At the site of the beginning of the Trail of Tears in Red Clay there now burns an Eternal Flame dedicated, in 2012 by the Principle Chief of the Eastern Band Cherokee, to the Memory of those who were lost on the trail.

Very dark times in our nation's history. Something we should never forget.
When I was a young man I was a connector/ironworker (the crazy guys that walk on steel beams way up in the air). Most of the guys that work on erecting radio towers are Native Americans that worked out of the same union hall. I learned a lot about the "real" history of The Seminoles from them.